Learning how to coup with democracy

Daniel Ortega and Dmitry Medvedev

How democracies perish is a very old question and the various answers given by political science are still disputed. How young and unconsolidated/aspirant democracies perish is an easier question, given the fact that some concrete lessons are offered generously these days, and their charm seems irresistible for would-be autocrats.

The very much praised phenomenon of democratic diffusion during the wave of democratization in Latin America since the 1970s seems to be undermined at the beginning of this century by another type of diffusion, of an authoritarian kind this time. The authoritarian diffusion manifests itself in various fields, but what is striking is the fact that the attacks against the media, the party system, the institutional checks and balances or the civil society are replicated from one country to the next, in a continuous process of imitating and learning from your neighbor the art of destroying democracy by just simply  asserting your democratic credentials and good intentions.

Dezbaterea pe tema „uninominal-unicameral” se anunţă a fi ferventă şi ilogică

Parlamentul Suediei (Riksdag)

Sunt deja doi ani de când ziceam:

Să presupunem, deci, că, de mâine, vom avea parlament unicameral ales prin vot uninominal. Experienţa alegerilor locale de până acum îmi permite să estimez că noul parlament ar putea fi altfel decât până acum (mai carismatic), dar nu mai competent şi, aproape sigur, la fel de coruptibil.

Privind înapoi aproape că ma mir cât de timidă este critica pe care o aduceam atunci acestui sistem. Astăzi dacă aş vorbi despre uninominal aş avea desigur cuvinte mult mai aspre.

Liberalii Burke, Constant şi Tocqueville

Benjamin Constant

Edmund Burke

Alexis de Tocqueville

Complexitatea şi bogaţia unei opere este, cel mai adesea, o bună măsură a valorii şi perenităţii acesteia. În cazul operei lui Edmund Burke, a lui Benjamin Constant şi a lui Alexis de Tocqueville, această observaţie nu are nevoie de precizări suplimentare. Totuşi, atunci când sunt aduşi în discuţie aceşti trei mari gânditori politici, care au trăit şi scris în epoci diferite, persistă o profundă ambiguitate, ba chiar o confuzie,  cu privire la mesajul lor filozofic fundamental, o confuzie care a luat amploare în a doua jumătate a veacului XX. Aşadar, sunt aceşti filozofi politici reprezentaţi ai liberalismului sau ilustrează gândirea conservatoare şi conservatorismul?

Degringolada stangii europene (1989-2009): Un raspuns de la Bogdan C. Enache

Bogdan Enache a purtat un dialog cu profesorul Vladimir Tismăneanu pe tema situaţiei şi perspectivei stângii Europene. Întregul text îl găsiţi pe blogul domnul Tismăneanu.

Schimbări majore în sistemul de partide german după alegerile pentru Bundestag

Rezultate parţiale ale alegerilor din Germania. Courtesy of International Spiegel Online

Duminică a avut loc in Germania bilantul marii coalitii CDU-CSU si SPD. Angela Merkel rămâne cancelar, dar într-un peisaj politic transformat în mod radical. Alegerile pentru Bundestag din 27 septembrie au produs mai multe surprize şi chiar câteva recorduri istorice pentru sistemul de partide german, aflat într-o proces de masive transformări, care cu siguranţă vor continua în anii următori. In primul rând, a devenit şi mai evidentă decât în 2005 transformarea sistemului de partide într-o competiţie cu cinci actori, chiar şase dacă socotim CDU şi CSU în mod separat, cu atât mai mult cu cât CSU,  gruparea creştin conservatoare din Bayern, este al treilea partid în ordinea mărimii în noua coaliţie de centru dreapta a cancelarului Merkel.

Proiectul “Basescu” si referendumul pentru parlament unicameral (syndicated)

Am scris deja de 2 ori in ultimele doua saptamani despre:

- Proiectul Basescu si “noul sistem politic”

- si despre Tentatia antidemocratica a anului 2009 

US makes major strategic shift on Missile Defense

A ground-based interceptor lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., Dec. 5, 2008. (DoD photo by Joe Davila, U.S. Air Force/Released)

The President of the United States, Barack Obama has announced on September 17, a major shift in the policy of the US concerning the deployment of anti-ballistic missile defenses in Central and Eastern Europe in order to protect its European allies from a possible Iranian threat. In this article I will argue that this move is a part of a larger strategy of retrenchment, designed to make American power more flexible and adaptable in an international system defined both by symmetrical and asymmetrical threats. The move does not signal by any means a waning of America’s commitment to Europe’s security or for that matter, the security of Central and Eastern Europe. Canceling the deployment of the Ground Based Interceptors in Poland and the X band radar in the Czech Republic does not mean the United States is giving up on creating a national missile defense capability.

Authoritarian regimes thrive in the UN Human Rights Council

At the beginning of this month, two very troubling reports on the state of democracy in the world have been released almost simultaneously, and both are concerned with the highest locus of legitimacy and authority when dealing with democracy and human rights, the UN and, most specifically, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the successor of the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) since 2006. The first research is Freedom House’s annual report on the activity of UNHRC and the second was released by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). This article will present the conclusions of these two reports, briefly corroborating their results with the most recent Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Report (2008) scores on political rights and civil liberties (a scale from 1 to 7, 1 for the highest degree of freedom, and 7 for the lowest level).

Appeasement

Munich Agreement: Neville Chamberlain, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Edouard Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Galeazzo Ciano

The term appeasement is unpopular today both in politics and in academia as it is associated with the policy pursued by France and Great Britain towards Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The highpoint of this policy was reached on September 29, 1938 in Munich when the Western Powers gave in to Hitler’s territorial demands concerning Czechoslovakia. Since then the term has been associated with political and military weakness and treachery. This article represents the second installment in a series  dedicated to the commemorations of 70 years since the start of World War II and will deal with the political implications of appeasement. In the following lines I will outline the meaning of appeasement and its implications for the international system. My approach will draw upon the work of Robert Gilpin and of Mark R. Brawley and will concentrate on defining appeasement and explaining the political context in which it was implemented.

World War II: Seventy years after

World War II fighting

Few events have had such a deep impact on world history as the conflict that griped the international system seventy years ago. As all great power wars in the last five hundred years it started in Europe, with a bid a for hegemony made by a Germany, the second in twenty-five years, but it soon spread to North Africa, the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. World War II was a total war, the second in less than a generation, and as such it involved attacks on civilians and genocide. From a military and strategic point of view it was a total war, as the aim of the war was the re-ordering of the entire international system and the destruction of some of its members; its scope was not limited to the European continent, it saw an unprecedented level of societal mobilization for the war effort in every country involved and it was prosecuted with every means available, culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.